


All The Days Ordained

by fulgurites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Religion, Suicidal Thoughts, how do you do chapters? help me? i'm new here?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 19:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12918342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fulgurites/pseuds/fulgurites





	1. Prologue

Prologue

 

 _Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there._ – Psalm 139, 7:8.

 

 

Every night for three days Inspector Javert returned to the Pont au Change and stared into the waters, his spirit hovering on indecision as he regarded the bruising depths below. Around him, all was quiet. Paris was muffled by the night, hushed like a thief under the darkness that transformed the Seine, city, and sky alike into one massive obscurity; at this hour, only drunkards and a lone fisherman passed him by. He could not say what it was that prevented him from making the final step any more than he could say what led him to the edge at all. He only knew that at the end of each night, he retrieved his hat and walked back the way he came. The night air was cold and the walk back to Rue d’Invalides was long -- he had time to gaze up at the silvery brocade of stars, to fix his mind on nothing at all. One could say that Javert’s soul was engulfed in a great and silent storm; Javert himself would have described it as a period of hauntedness, more inclined to believe in ghosts than in the soul.

            “Inspector?”

            A voice came from the darkness of a doorframe at Place de Marais, startling him from his thoughts. Javert grabbed his baton and spun, ready to defend himself.

            “Who’s there?”

            “Javert, it is you.”

            “Who are you? Speak your business,” Javert said impatiently. “Or think better of it and leave me alone.”

            The man stumbled out of the doorway. Dressed in a simple yellow overcoat, he was broad-shouldered and sturdy, with a halo of curling white hair. He could have been any aging Parisian gentleman – but then Javert saw him step forward into the streetlight. His wide frightened face, his dark eyes, his stiff limp earned through decades in the galleys – it was Jean Valjean.

            “You!”

            “It is all right, Inspector,” Valjean said. His voice was very calm and quiet. “This settles things quite well.”

            “Go – out of my sight. Leave me alone!”

            “I can go with you now,” Valjean said in the same oddly steady tone. He raised his palms before him to show Javert that he was unarmed. As if the old man wasn’t strong enough to strangle him with his bare hands – he had seen it done by convicts during prison riots, heard it happen.“My work is done.”

            “I want,” Javert hissed fiercely, “Nothing – nothing to do with you!”

            The white-haired man looked surprised. “Inspector?”

            “I cannot arrest you,” Javert said. He felt fear twist in him like the churning of the Seine below his feet. The smooth stones under his feet seemed immaterial. “I cannot charge you, I cannot let you go free – I cannot look at you, Valjean -- I cannot bear it. Get out of my sight -- please.”

            “Inspector –“

            “Please!”

            Valjean did not move. As if to erase the horrible figure, Javert’s vision flickered and narrowed – he was suddenly afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life, more afraid than when he had felt a knife pressed to his throat or a prisoner’s boot at his head. He felt the presence of something great converging upon him, and he knew in that moment that he would fail. He would fall.

            “Javert?”

            Strong hands reached for him, pulled him roughly. There was a loud ringing in his ears. Javert closed his eyes and took the final step off the precipice of himself. The water was cold but it would bear him up, he knew.

 


	2. De Profundis

 

 _If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast._ – Psalm 139, 9:10

 

 

He awoke to the sound of church bells. Eyes closed, he counted them out of habit and vague speculation. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. He could hear sparrows in the eaves of a church and the calls of market-goers in the square below, negotiating noisily for their week’s groceries. It was morning. He had been out again to the bridge last night, and he had started walking home, and someone had called out to him --

            “Monsieur, you are awake,” a woman exclaimed. She was a short, round-faced housekeeper with thin blonde hair pulled back high on her forehead. She gestured encouragingly at him, as if he were an invalid or a child. Javert blinked. “There is breakfast downstairs if you wish. The good monsieur has left for market, but he will return soon.”

            Javert pulled back the blankets covering him and sat up, his face warming in embarrassment and confusion as the memories returned. “Where am I? What address is this?” he demanded, a part of him already knowing and dreading the answer.

            “65 Rue de Simplice,” she said. “Do you take cream and sugar?”

            “I…I will take my leave.”

            “Monsieur Javert, Monsieur Fauchelevant requested that you stay –“

            “I will leave,” he said. “Excuse me.”

            He pulled on his wool overcoat – someone had rid him of it along with his boots, he noticed -- and pulled on his white cravat until it was straight and unwrinkled once more. His lead baton was missing, as was his sailing knife and the pistol he kept secretly in a satchel under his shirt. He cursed Valjean. He had a sudden image of a lion he had seen once in a rare trip to the Paris zoo, before his mother died – how the wild beast had paced, watching the crowd with a terrible expression, its thin sides caved in and streaked with mud. It had been declawed and its major teeth pulled, he saw; when it roared, his mother laughed. “See how feral he is,” she had crowed. “See him do his worst!”

            Javert pushed past the housekeeper with a sharp command and half-ran downstairs, determined to get out before the old con returned. Over the mantle he saw a glint of metal – it was his gun, hidden behind a collection of Augustinian sermons. He grabbed the weapon and looked around for his baton for a moment before turning away. No time. Soon Valjean would arrive and ask questions with that infuriating calm – Valjean truly was not a man or a criminal, it seemed, but his own benevolent interrogator, his assigned saint-demon, his personal ghost. It was unbearable. Javert barreled for the door.

            “Stop! Wait –“

            Valjean was halfway up the steps to the cottage, clutching two burlap bags and a walking stick. With confident force, he grabbed Javert’s arm and stayed his escape. With a snarl, Javert snapped his hand away.

            “Inspector, please, you are not well. You must stay and eat something at least.” Valjean looked worried, fumbling with the worn edge of his cuffs. “You collapsed, monsieur.”

            He felt sick. Again, this strange and horrible mercy that he could not deserve, understand, or accept. He would rather die, he thought. Rather that than continue to live in debt to the one man he had wronged the most. The guilt made his head spin, much like the evening before. His vision dimmed again and Valjean’s face drained of color.

            “You are not well,” Valjean repeated. “Inspector, I insist. Come inside, please. Helene! We will need a wet rag!”

            He was carried, lifted, set down in a chair. A cup of lukewarm water was pressed to his mouth – a bitter tea, sharp and tasting of cheap spices. Slowly his vision cleared – he was at Valjean’s table, his head slumped forward on his arms. At his side, the old man was pouring another cup of tea with shaking hands.

            “You require a doctor, monsieur,” he muttered.

            “I want nothing from you.”

            “Do you have relations in Paris?”

            “No.”

            “A housekeeper?”

            “No.”

            “Oh,” Valjean said. “Then you must stay here, until you are recovered. Helene, if you could send a message to Doctor Guillaret?”

            “Stop. No doctor is necessary –“

            “But you fell –“

            “Monsieur Valjean,” Javert said tiredly. “Let me leave.”

            “No,” Valjean said. “Not when you are in such a state. When is the last time you ate a meal?” Valjean spoke to him with a light inflection, but underneath his voice was strained – it seemed he was trying just as hard as Javert was to manage his nerves. Every so often, he ran a hand over a scratch in the wooden table, as if soothing it. “I am not trying to keep you from your duties, Inspector. I swear it. After the doctor has made his examination, we will go to the office of the police and I will turn myself in. But for the moment, I would prefer you stay and rest until you are improved. “

            “Valjean,” Javert interrupted. “I will not turn you in.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because it would be wrong. God help me, it would be wrong.”

            Javert felt something in him shake and falter, hearing the words aloud. Valjean held his gaze, warm but distant brown meeting Javert’s pale grey. The old man seemed to be searching him, looking for any sign of deception. His mouth was partially open as if in a question, but any words he might have uttered passed from Valjean’s lips in a soundless exhale. Javert flinched away.

            “Inspector,” Valjean said at last. “Please, eat. If you will not have the doctor, Helene will call a carriage for you.”

            He pushed a plate of bread and porridge at Javert and limped away. Javert heard a lock upstairs clatter shut. With Valjean gone, the house on Rue de Simplice was silent except for Helene’s quiet sweeping in another room. He was hungry, he realized. He picked up the bread – coarse and dark, a peasant’s meal.

Javert chewed mechanically and gazed around at the bare white-washed walls, the cross on the wall, the hand-wrought pine table with an uneven finish. Two silver candlesticks stood in the center of the table – the only expensive items in the room. The candlewax smelled faintly of honey and incense – the same mixture that lingered on Javert’s coat and on the blankets he had woken in.

This was where Jean Valjean lived, then – where he read his sermons, and slept, and tended his garden. It was a curious thought. He had never imagined the convict as occupying a home and carrying out chores. He had never really thought about him at all, in fact, besides as prey to be sought and captured. But now the lion had lost his teeth –Javert was the prey now.

Enough. He needed silence, solitude, and the severe comfort of his own rooms. He needed to be as far away as possible from Jean Valjean and his unendurable kindness. He needed to flee. Javert stood. His mother’s words came back to him, unbidden, as he buttoned his police coat and slipped out the door. _See the silly lion, little one. See him do his worst._

 

 


End file.
